An almost perfect film about an almost impossible sets of people
It’s a film I was totally unaware of. But as I saw a blank looking Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the posters, I knew I was in safe hands. From the look of it, it looked like a serious movie which would be focused on plot where Nawazuddin would solve it, may be by being a police or CID and photograph would be a clue. But I was so wrong. Maybe I could make a film with my story. But this ‘photograph’ was more about drama than about plot. And unexpectedly Nawaz bhai plays second fiddle.
Nawazuddin always is really good at being in a film with less screen space and less importance but in the end comes out as someone with more impact. But here even he was outplayed by a brilliant Sanya Malhotra. All through the film, I was thinking, where I had seen here. Only on knowing her filmography, I found that it was Dangal. Even though she was the least important of characters there. I remember one specific scene when a desolate Amir Khan comes up to her second daughter and asks whether she’s at least interested in sports or something like that. She tells it affirmatively. It was such a lovely scene. She does exactly what’s needed.
Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a photographer near Gateway of India who gets introduced to us by a beautiful dialogue, which works when we don’t see his face but when we see his face, we get to know that it is said devoid of any emotions. Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) on the other hand is even bare than that when it comes to emotions. All we see is a little smile and very little dialogue from her. The maximum she smiles is when she’s there with Rafi’s grandmother, another charming character.
Rafi meets Miloni by chance and the plot gets the twist when he sends her photo as his fiancé to his grandmother. As her grandmother comes to see her, Rafi takes Miloni, who wanted to be an actor, along with him to meet her. Whether a girl like Miloni would be brave enough to go with someone like Rafi is a question mark but here it happens so we accept as such. Even though the idea is farfetched, how it’d have been if it had happened is the question. And they both play it really well.
There were a couple of excellent scenes, one, where they go in car and Rafi asks driver to shut his mouth. Miloni again as mum as ever and in another scene the tuition teacher takes Rafi to be an outsider who has come out to help Miloni. He doesn’t even think that he could be Miloni’s acquaintance. But there were a couple of bad scenes too where it was said out loud. Especially the scene in cab where the driver asks whether they both are from drama company. It was in face and rude.
Grandma (Farrukh Jaffar) comes as a great icebreaker. Reminded me very much of my own grandmother. The way she talks, behaves etc. How effectively she goes from her irritated mode to compassion mode is legendary. She was good in saying even the rudest of sentence in a nice way.
constantscribbles 